USPS Priority changes 01-22-2023

[phaessler]

Heads up and delete if not allowed.
Since so many of us ship USPS for our items, I figured some may not know that a truly cost saving product was dropped from the USPS Priority lineup.

The Regional A & B flat rate boxes were discontinued on Jan-22-2023.

Here is the link:

https://link.usps.com/2022/12/29/priority-mail-change/

Thanks

Pete

[phantom22]

Not to mention the "temporary" holiday price increases that just turn into the permanent yearly increases.

In any case I use this opportunity to recommend the use of pirateship.com. It allows regular consumers to pay business and cubic rates for shipping USPS and UPS. The discounts vary depending on size and weight of the package, BUT it is always cheaper than at the post office and is INSANELY cheaper than at the UPS store. I've found USPS to be around 10 - 25% cheaper and UPS to be between 35-50% cheaper.

Also, beware of flat rate boxes. They are seldom the cheaper choice and often much more expensive (BTW - you get cheaper shipping on flat rate through pirateship too). The only time I really use them is when I'm shipping lead. It's a great deal for that purpose.

Also, beware that UPS is notorious for never paying or making it near impossible to get paid on a damage claim. I could make an entire thread on making insurance claims through the major carriers (USPS, UPS, and FedEx) if anyone is interested as I ship stuff for a living. There are definitely things I've learned over the years to make that process as smooth as possible (still not that smooth, but mostly successful.)

[phantom22]

Also an aside, if you still have regional boxes laying around they can still be used, they just go by size and weight like regular packages. I mention that because the regional rate box sizes can be better for shipping a lot of things.

[ddeck22]

Pirateship has a goofy name, but it is 100% legitimate.

Save your boxes and reuse them as needed. The USPS boxes aren't "free" as they have a much higher cost to ship than using your own. A cheap postal scale and a regular printer will cost you what you save on the first shipment doing it yourself.

Flat rate boxes tend to be the biggest ripoff in the business unless you're shipping lead.

[wcp4570]

phantom
Thanks for the tip.

wcp

[RustyReel]

.

Flat rate boxes are the biggest ripoff in the business unless you're shipping lead.

That's not been my experience. Of course in south FL I live far away from everywhere. I found that if it is over a pound the flat rate box was cheaper than using my own and buying a box to use. My days of scrounging dumpters for packing materials were over a long time ago. I also found the regional boxes to be very useful.

[ascast]

Does not Priority flat rate include insurance and tracking? And the boxes?

[jdgabbard]

Not to mention the "temporary" holiday price increases that just turn into the permanent yearly increases.

In any case I use this opportunity to recommend the use of pirateship.com. It allows regular consumers to pay business and cubic rates for shipping USPS and UPS. The discounts vary depending on size and weight of the package, BUT it is always cheaper than at the post office and is INSANELY cheaper than at the UPS store. I've found USPS to be around 10 - 25% cheaper and UPS to be between 35-50% cheaper.

Also, beware of flat rate boxes. They are seldom the cheaper choice and often much more expensive (BTW - you get cheaper shipping on flat rate through pirateship too). The only time I really use them is when I'm shipping lead. It's a great deal for that purpose.

Also, beware that UPS is notorious for never paying or making it near impossible to get paid on a damage claim. I could make an entire thread on making insurance claims through the major carriers (USPS, UPS, and FedEx) if anyone is interested as I ship stuff for a living. There are definitely things I've learned over the years to make that process as smooth as possible (still not that smooth, but mostly successful.)

Also, keep ShipStation in mind. It's what Paypal uses for it's shipping now, and is a little cheaper than standard USPS rates. It's best to set up a Shipstation account through Paypal, rather than try to do it through ShipStation directly. However, keep the address bookmarked, because getting to it from the Paypal site is goofy at times, and impossible at others...they keep changing stuff up.

[ddeck22]

That's not been my experience. Of course in south FL I live far away from everywhere. I found that if it is over a pound the flat rate box was cheaper than using my own and buying a box to use. My days of scrounging dumpters for packing materials were over a long time ago. I also found the regional boxes to be very useful.

Yes, I guess if you have to buy the boxes. But I can send a box (my box) of the same weight and dimensions for 20-30% less using Priority Mail cubic for just over a pound. I just save them from other orders or get them from friends/family.

I think that this is a good discussion and everyone will have slight differences, but the key is to provide options to help us all keep some of our money as opposed to sending it to the USPS or UPS.

[KenH]

I use Pirate Ship site for shipping. MUCH easier to deal with than the USPS website, and you've got a choice of the 3 main shippers to choose depending on who's the cheapest.

[phantom22]

That's not been my experience. Of course in south FL I live far away from everywhere. I found that if it is over a pound the flat rate box was cheaper than using my own and buying a box to use. My days of scrounging dumpters for packing materials were over a long time ago. I also found the regional boxes to be very useful.

Flat rates are good if shipping far distances as the rates for priority mail change depending on the zone that they are shipping from and shipping to.

Let's take an example of a padded flat rate envelope and shipping a 3 pound item.

The last I remember is it cost me $8.30 to ship anywhere. I live in NC so it would likely be cheaper to use the padded envelope to the west coast. Locally, say Virginia, It would cost less money to use a regular priority mail box that isn't flat rate.. Probably $0.50-$1.00 cheaper.

That is a small difference, but lets say your shipping the same item in a medium flat rate box because it won't fit in a envelope or small flat rate. That box would cost me around $14.90 to ship. To the west coast, maybe no difference, but let's say Virginia again it will be probably around $8.00.

With a large flat rate you could end up overpaying by over $10!

Again, it depends on your location, where it's going, and weight.

It sounds a bit complicated, but on those shipping websites it's pretty easy to compare the prices of regular priority vs. flat rate or parcel select etc...

I don't know how many times I've been standing in line at the USPS and someone asks for "cheapest possible". Here is where my big problem with the USPS comes in. They are a government service and not necessarily a for profit business like UPS or FedEx. I have NEVER heard them suggest the actual cheapest method. In fact, they generally suggest a much more expensive method usually involving.....flat rate boxes! You would think parcel select doesn't even exist as I've never heard that suggested.

I finally spoke up one time because the clerk was about to rip off this couple in front of me for close to $100. They had a very large box. Probably close to 18x18x24. For that box you get the non-standard box size surcharge (money grab) of $14 on top of whatever shipping method you choose. Priority mail was something in the area of $95 plus the surcharge. I asked the people if they didn't mind some advice.

I asked if they could ship UPS and they said they could. I looked up the dimensions and the weight and at the time PirateShip was nearly 50% cheaper than at the desk at a UPS store. Total cost to ship UPS through Pirate ship was $27.95. Retail at the UPS store was around $55.

I can't stand when the employees try to rip people off like that.

[phantom22]

Does not Priority flat rate include insurance and tracking? And the boxes?

The boxes are free. The catch is that they have to have priority mail postage to send. Which, if a flat rate, can be more expensive than other options.

Priority mail includes $100 of insurance. (Insurance is a topic for another thread if anyone cares to hear it.)

[45_Colt]

It also appears that when shipping USPS Priority Mail International (Canada in this case) that you can no longer use your own box. Was about $47 USD for a 2-1/2 # box. Now can only use flat rate boxes. Which a medium box is $61 USD.

And UPS, their rates for domestic have gone through the ceiling. 2-day air for a 4# box (moderate size) has gone from about $32 to $81 bucks. And that is to a commercial address.

I am so glad that within a few months I'm done with this. Full retirement here I come.

45_Colt

[sukivel]

Thanks for the info, I need to look at one of the vendors mentioned.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[45_Colt]

And if you ship larger packages outside the US, there is ipsparcel.com

Use them for FED-X and sometime UPS. Keeps the cost down. Not the easiest service to use, but they can cut the ship to cost in half. Need an account, then create the order, then wait until it is processed and they email you the shipping forms.

You print them, final pack, and do a drop off.

45_Colt

[schutzen-jager]

The boxes are free. The catch is that they have to have priority mail postage to send. Which, if a flat rate, can be more expensive than other options.

Priority mail includes $100 of insurance. (Insurance is a topic for another thread if anyone cares to hear it.)

USPS priority mail is only $50.00 free insurance - iirc UPS is $100.00 -

[Handloader109]

I'll add a bit. I don't ship a lot, but have an account with all three carriers. I hardly ever use usps account, I ship through PayPal and it's same discount as having a shipstation account. I ALWAYS check all three carriers if I'm shipping anything over 5 pounds. Distance make a lot of difference when using usps, if in state or neighboring state, usps can be considerably cheaper. Flat rate boxes not used a lot, tend to be 20% more costly. UPS on their website is EXPENSIVE. I've gotten a discount code for them that cust 10 to 25% off. But even then, I found using PayPal shipping I could save another 10 or so %... fedex if needed, rates usually slightly less than ups. As in all things ,ymmv

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[elmacgyver0]

How much effort do you put into finding "the cheapest"?
Sometimes the "cheapest" isn't always the cheapest, time is money.

[phantom22]

USPS priority mail is only $50.00 free insurance - iirc UPS is $100.00 -

They have recently changed it in the last 6 months to a year to be $100. Before that, shipping through pirateship or through ebay still gave you $100 insurance which I think used to be for the "commercial" shipping service that you could get through those sites. It is now $100 for everyone. I think UPS was always $100. Good luck collecting from them though.

[phantom22]

How much effort do you put into finding "the cheapest"?
Sometimes the "cheapest" isn't always the cheapest, time is money.

I usually attempt to find the cheapest as I have found that most of the time there is little difference in the shipping speed between the services. I've sent priority mail that takes over a week and have sent parcel select that has taken two days and everything in between,

I've always thought of the different services as a bit of a scam. Especially since they stopped guaranteeing the 2 or 3 day priority delivery. I figure that my parcel package usually ends up on the same truck as the priority package. Not always the case, but I would say at least 75% of the time there is really no difference.

I will, however, occasionally pay a little more to use FedEx over UPS. First because their drop off location is more convenient for me (time is money!), and second they will actually pay out damage claims.

UPS is still my go to for sending golf clubs though, usually several dollars cheaper. And while I would personally pay the extra for FedEx, the cheaper shipping sells more clubs.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Also an aside, if you still have regional boxes laying around they can still be used, they just go by size and weight like regular packages. I mention that because the regional rate box sizes can be better for shipping a lot of things.

FYI to all, I've never been able to figure out prices (using USPS website) for Priority Mail, except the flat rate. I've used the Regional box A many times. It's usually cheaper than the small flat rate box if the box doesn't need to cross a mountain range. I've shipped many things from MN to MI ...as well as TX...it's like $6 or $7.

I had a bag of brass go today to Texas. The padded flat rate envelope was $10.40 I asked the clerk how much it would be for Priority cubical (that is what they call the rate schedule if I use the now discontinued Regional A box. The shipping for that came to $25 (from MN to TX). So I guess I won't be using my stash of Regional A boxes.

[phantom22]

I swear that there is someone or a group of someones that are only there to make things dumber. It's like there's a contest to see who can come up with the most asinine ideas and then implement them just to watch things implode. You could apply this to basically any government agency.

When I offer shipping on my ebay store I hesitate to use priority at all anymore because it is so ridiculously expensive. Its almost like those in charge of making the prices have stock or some other interest in UPS or FedEx and are trying to push business in that direction. I know, corruption in government, it sounds super duper unlikely and unprecedented.

[rickw55]

Also, keep ShipStation in mind. It's what Paypal uses for it's shipping now, and is a little cheaper than standard USPS rates. It's best to set up a Shipstation account through Paypal, rather than try to do it through ShipStation directly. However, keep the address bookmarked, because getting to it from the Paypal site is goofy at times, and impossible at others...they keep changing stuff up.

Does ShipStation charge a monthly fee? I'm an occasional seller on ebay, and I don't want to pay a monthly fee when I'm not selling something.
I asked Paypal if there was a monthly fee, since they were using ShipStation.. They said that there wasn't a fee to use Paypal, but didn't answer if there was a fee for ShipStation.
Thanks,
Rick

[phantom22]

If you buy labels through eBay when you sell you get pretty much the same discount. I've not noticed any difference between eBay and PirateShip.

[dtknowles]

...In any case I use this opportunity to recommend the use of pirateship.com. It allows regular consumers to pay business and cubic rates for shipping USPS and UPS. The discounts vary depending on size and weight of the package, BUT it is always cheaper than at the post office and is INSANELY cheaper than at the UPS store. I've found USPS to be around 10 - 25% cheaper and UPS to be between 35-50% cheaper.

Can I use Pirateship to ship live ammo?

[ddeck22]

Can I use Pirateship to ship live ammo?

I just looked it up and you cannot use PirateShip to send any hazardous materials. There are instructions on how to do it without Pirate Ship, which essentially is "Go to UPS."

The only exception is Lithium Ion batteries.

Here is the UPS one: https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/5613984-ups-prohibited-items

And USPS: https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/2945261-usps-prohibited-items

[dtknowles]

I just looked it up and you cannot use PirateShip to send any hazardous materials. There are instructions on how to do it without Pirate Ship, which essentially is "Go to UPS."

The only exception is Lithium Ion batteries.

Here is the UPS one: https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/5613984-ups-prohibited-items

And USPS: https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/2945261-usps-prohibited-items

Loaded ammo is not haz mat. It is what used to be ORMD and now just needs the diamond box marking.

Tim

[ddeck22]

Loaded ammo is not haz mat. It is what used to be ORMD and now just needs the diamond box marking.

Tim

The links above clearly state you cannot ship ammunition using Pirate ship. It is a prohibited item to send using Pirate ship. I was replying to the previous person’s specific question.

[dtknowles]

The links above clearly state you cannot ship ammunition using Pirate ship. It is a prohibited item to send using Pirate ship. I was replying to the previous person’s specific question.

My mistake, it was my question and I did not go read your links.

Tim

[Horn Ridge]

One thing worth mentioning is the sending of payment by certified mail. Instead of using certified mail (which must be signed for) I've started sending them as a First Class Package. For $3.48 I get tracking and usually get it there in 3 days. I've found that most folks aren't home, or don't want to wait around for the mailman to show up. After the second attempt it's held at the post office and the person has to go there to sign. With a First Class Package, myself and the recipient can follow it and know when it arrives, it's more convenient for both and the same or slightly less money to do it.

[arclight]

I've shipped a number of heavy items (a 12" lathe faceplate, two sets of heavy steel flats for a powder magazine, a small rock drill) using the UPS Simple Ship method. For heavy and dense items, it's almost always much cheaper than UPS by weight. They have options up to 144 cubic inches, and they let you ship your own packaging in any configuration, as long as it's under the total volume of the small/medium/large you paid for.

One caveat: If you ship a crated item, make sure it is enclosed in cardboard or pallet wrap from Home Depot, as they will hit you with a surcharge if you have bare wood exposed. Another option is the heavy-durty box tape from U-Haul. It's cheap and you get a huge roll that will stick to almost anything. And it looks like cardboard.

[LeadHead72]

The discontinuation of the Regional A & B boxes is a load of poo!! I've saved people a lot of money using those boxes, especially the "A" boxes.
Thank you, J.B.!

[Rickf1985]

As much as I hate JB the guy to blame for this crap is Louis DeJoy. He is the one that took over the post office a couple years ago and immediately started raising prices and cutting back on service. All the politicians said he was going to be fired but he said "I am not going anywhere!", And he has not. Guess he is making someone happy but it certainly is not the paying public.

[TNsailorman]

I live in Tennessee and was told recently by a postal employee that any package going from the east coast across the Mississippi west the rates went "way up", his exact words. I found that to be true the hard way. I shipped a 1905 Springfield bayonet to Washington state and it cost me $23.00 + for the privilege.

[Horn Ridge]

Just remember, there are other options besides the USPS flat rate boxes. I see a lot of people use them out of convenience because they can throw it in “a box”, tape it up and be done. What cost $19 to ship in a MFRB could’ve been shipped for < $10 if put in a smaller box. I get it, they’re handy and I use them sometimes for that reason. But usually there are cheaper options.

[Rickf1985]

People got used to flat rate guarantee of three day delivery. That no longer pertains, they tell you if you don't have it in 7 days then call them. You do still have the added insurance but try collecting on it. Like any other of the services, you would need a lawyer to do so and they know you are not going to go that far.

[ddeck22]

Note that if you choose the flat rate boxes on Pirateship, you get roughly a 20% discount. For example, a small flat rate box is $8.10 and a medium flat rate box is $14 through Pirateship.

I guess having the postal employee do it for you costs the extra amount.....

[TNsailorman]

I have had one package "disappear" and it was a holster from Simply Rugged that was mailed somewhere but who knows where. The lady who provided the tracking info sent a crazy tracking number to me. After some weeks and no holster I sent them an email asking about the holster. They sent me a reply with a tracking number that was not a number used by either USPS or FedEx. I took all the info I had to the post office and talked to the head postmaster. She took the info and went into her office and came back some minutes later and stated she had called them and they were very confused about the tracking number. She went back and called them again after giving them some time to check things out on their end. Long story short, they had insured the shipment but had no positive tracking number. The post master came back and filled out a form for an insurance claim for me and after I signed it, she gave me a complete refund (in cash) based on the money order and shipping. I was told by the PM that the holster was probably lying in a dead letter storage somewhere and would after a certain period of time be disposed of. Maybe I am just lucky or blessed but I have only had that 1 package lost in over 55+ years of shipping and receiving packages. I did have one package tore all to pieces going to California but that package was paid for also and both me and the reciepiant made a few dollars on it. But that another story and interesting also. my experience anyway, james